I purchased a one way to my home country for almost 50% more than my original. This uses up all the slack I have in my budget. I can’t take a month off work anymore… at least, not on my own dime.
Because last night I realised… there’s nothing I want more than to be back with my family. I have no business to start. I am not looking forward to a new job. I have no challenges to overcome.
Even though ayahuasca seems to have woken me up to a view of life as an infinite, painfully ever-growing thing… that even death won’t be a rest… it doesn’t mean I don’t want to do the most with my life while I have it, and avoid death.
I want to see my family before I die. And before they die. And death is coming. There’s no escaping it.
The best I can hope for in seeing them is that I feel comforted and grounded once more, at peace with dying, at least temporarily… and that I can proceed to another mission, sense of purpose, whatever.
And of course that sense of purpose and mission will eventually feel just as hollow as my previous one did.
Being in transition doesn’t feel good. It feels hopeless and meaningless.
Maybe… maybe what I’m feeling right now, and what I’ve felt ever since aya, is similar to what the baby feels as they are stuck in the birth canal. Uncomfortable, not out yet, but not in either.
In which case… I think there’s a kind of grace to it? It’s never as bad in the moment as I anticipate it to be in the future?
Nice article I just read on death: https://www.ramdass.org/dying-is-absolutely-safe/
Another article that has calmed me down a bit, yet also freaked me out too: https://www.ramdass.org/acknowledge-suffering/
Gurdjieff, the Russian philosopher, said there is nothing that can be attained spiritually without suffering in life. But at the same time, if you are going to proceed on the journey you must sacrifice suffering. You hear the dual nature of it. You have to have suffered because the suffering is what burns through you and deepens the compassion and opens the door. Suffering brings you closer to the mystery. At the same moment if you hold on to the suffering and grab at it and sort of wallow in it or cling to it, it stops the journey.
There is an understanding of suffering such that you don’t invite suffering into your life but when it comes you work with it and transform it. The extreme of it is the Christian monk who is saying, “God, God give me more pain. Give me more suffering because I want to get closer to you.” And Maharaj ji saying, “Do you like suffering or joy,” and saying, “I love suffering – it brings me so close to God.”
What this has me thinking is… ayahuasca overwhelmed me because I needed to be overwhelmed?
I had been playing it safe for too long?
Not living at my edge?
And does that mean if I again retreat into safety, avoid psychedelics, take low doses… I’ll be bitch slapped again eventually?
But the alternative to being bitch slapped is experiencing scary and painful shit all the time!
Should I really seek pain? Is that what it’s all about? Yeah I suppose it’ll lose its sting… but fuck!
God I wish life was easier.
Does my saying that mean that I’m making it hard?
Does my wish for easiness make my life hard?